


Midtown

by wildechilde17



Series: The business trilogy [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Clintasha Week, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Avengers Shawarma Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: Day 4 Clintasha Advent Calendar: Food and drink





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beneathground](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beneathground/gifts).



“Barton,” she repeats. 

“Huh? What?”

“I said are you good to do this? I can call in a ride.”

“I’m good,” he growls.

“That’s why you didn’t answer me the first three times I asked.”

“Told you, my comm blew. Ears are still ringing,” he lies.

Clint Barton has been missing in action since the battle ended.  He is somewhere, not here limping along a decimated midtown street.  He is lost inside himself, ears ringing or no. 

“And that explains the changing the subject?”

He doesn’t look at her. “I just wanna eat. Can we save the debrief?”

“Fine.  I’ll wait for you to ask me to pull the glass from your shoulders then too.”

He gives her busted lip and bleeding scalp a pointed scowl and then, “Medical can do it.”

She rolls her eyes. Unless Clint Barton is mind controlled again he won’t go anywhere medical.

Up ahead Stark is gesturing almost messianically.  It is clear to her that he isn’t as certain that he can find this last standing restaurant on foot, outside the heat of the firefight, as he is pretending.  Rogers is keeping pace but even he is struggling to give any appropriate social signs that he is listening to Stark’s nonstop chatter. 

Banner is as dazed if not more so than Clint.  He inches along the pavement in clothes carefully tailored for another man.  He does not appear to have language or conscious thought enough to refuse the excursion.

Thor stalks forward, hunched, hammer still hanging from his right hand.  His face has been etched with a scowl since the battle began.  It has only deepened.  Natasha thinks it is like watching people realize Clint Barton can do complex calculus in his head. 

Clint Barton was never affronted by the faces people pulled, the disbelief, the rationalisations. She had thought it a sign of disrespect, had allowed herself to grow angry at it.  Clint had only chuckled, stretching himself back, rocking unconcerned every chair he ever sat on, ‘Does not compute,’ he’d say of the stuttering, slack jawed conversation partner.

Thor’s expression is every bit the ‘does not compute’ 

But Clint is no longer rocking back on chairs and chuckling at underestimation.

“What’s Banner’s deal,” he asks suddenly.

“What?”

“Not like deal, deal…. I didn’t swap teams or anything,” he says hurriedly as though she would think for a second he was using their time to ask about Banner’s relationship status.  She throws him a disgusted look and he winces slightly before carrying on.  “You gave me a pretty good concussion back there.” He rubs his head for emphasis and dust, glass and paint chips shift about in the general nest of his hair.

She looks straight on as he speaks, low and swallowed up by a clench jaw, “Captain America, yeah, Coulson never shuts up about him.  And Stark, you did shadow for. I remember the muscles from mythology up there, New Mexico… so what’s Banner’s deal?  He turns green and gets big and shows up on a motorcycle.”

“Do you never read your intelligence briefings?”

“Most of them…. Some of them,” he sighs, “Nat, cut me some slack. Just give me the info.”

She tilts her head, taking in the man the conversation has turned to.  Dr Banner reaches for the glasses on his face, as though he wishes to remove and clean them.  He pokes himself in the eye before he appears to register that he is not wearing glasses. He flinches slightly but otherwise does not react.

“Dr Bruce Banner out of Culver University. Experimentation.  Big green angry results.  Fury sent me to India to get him.  Seems General Ross would like to cut him up for more than one reason.”

“Right,” he says sharply. He sounds somewhere between annoyed and concerned.  He had forgotten. She makes a silent note to track what information he needs to be given again. He has gaps. They cannot have gaps. She needs to make sure her partner remains her partner. 

Stark is walking backwards “Oi Spy Vs Spy coming up the rear, step on it would you.”

She blinks at the command but does not reply.  Barton at her side also stares ahead unresponsive.  Stark squints, throws his hands up and turns on his heels, continuing to talk about the best meals he has ever eaten.

“What did you see,” Clint says.

“Nothing.”

“Tasha,” he says his voice is hoarse and unrelenting.

“He’s louder, showier, when he’s afraid of dying.”

“Stark?” he asks though he knows the answer.

“Mm.”

“Didn’t think that guy could get louder…. Gonna be a problem?”

He is exhausted, staved and fighting a losing battle with concussion of that much she is certain.  He still asks.  He still offers his assistance without ever offering it.  It cannot be refused if he never offers it 

“First Shawarma,” she declares, though the very idea of it is absurd. 

She won’t look at him now, can’t look at him.  There hasn’t been time to calculate how close she came to losing him, his non offers of help, his warm, solid presence at her left, his constant eating of protein bars and joking about 80’s movies, his heavy boots, his large hands, her name cut short, always cut short, in his mouth.  There hasn’t been time to shove the fear and the grief back into tiny partitioned rooms in her mind.  There hasn’t been time to be alone with the relief of him, the rising sob that wants to curl its way out of her chest sounding like cut glass at the moment he said “I’ve got him”. 

She won’t look at him.  Doesn’t let the swell of it all show in her body.

Ahead Stark and the others disappear into a hole in the wall that is literally now a hole in the wall. 

“Yeah,” Clint grunts, “Food. Nap. Then reality.”

“Your knee is…”

“Fucked, yeah I know. Chair for my leg.  Food. Nap. Then reality.”

**Author's Note:**

> I may be a bit slow getting these up but I promise to write them all. Also this one isn't great. Sorry.


End file.
